


A Minute of Silence

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mama May + her ducklings, Positive Female Friendships, Team Bus - Freeform, Trip funeral, Women Supporting Women, canon compatible, mama may, mamma may - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 03:06:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7296994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At Trip's funeral, Simmons seeks some time alone, and eventually, May goes to check on her. Fairly angsty + a bit of hurt/comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Minute of Silence

It would have been fitting if the sun had shone that day. If the birds had sung and the grass had gleamed bright green, a friendly if not quite welcome reminder that the universe did go on in the wake of their loss. Mack had even thought to bring along Trip’s iPod, just in case a teary sing-a-long was in order.

It wasn’t.

Instead, the sky was a slightly greyish, half-overcast one, with strips of grey cloud and searing sunlight drifting past at irritating intervals. It even rained at one point, but nobody bothered putting an umbrella up. There weren’t enough people, or the right people, for anyone to bother.

“They should all be here,” Skye muttered bitterly, her arms across her chest, rocking from one foot to the other.

“I wish they could,” Coulson said, “but too many people would arouse suspicion. Besides, we– we can’t spare anyone at the moment.” 

He blinked and looked up and away, and Skye was glad that at this particular moment, it was too overcast to bear the eye strain of sunglasses, so she could see the red-silver glint of tears in his eyes. Otherwise, she might have punched him, and God only knows where that could have landed them.

May passed a concerned eye up the shaken, restrained body of her subordinate officer – her runaway – her experiment – her student – Skye. She pressed her lips together. The urge to cry didn’t come up a lot these days. Not to actually, tears-and-snot cry. But she wished she could have held that girl like someone should have held her, way back when, so that at least one of them could have got it out. May bit her lip then, realising with a pang of anger that had long since turned to sorrow, that she too often thought of Skye as a child. She hadn’t been much older when It had happened. Bahrain. And Skye had been so scared of herself she’d hardly even agreed to come out here today. In the end, she had only come at Simmons’ insistence.

May pinched her sleeves at the thought. She gritted her teeth and turned her attention to the young biochemist. The inches between Simmons and Fitz had been the subject of many an intrusion into her meditation sessions – both from Coulson, and her own mind. He insisted on calling them “Fitzsimmons” until they voiced an opposition, refusing to believe they could ever fall apart so badly, even when Simmons had left. Especially then. He might as well have lit a candle in the window for her.

It made part of May want to knock some sense into him, and to remind him that sometimes if something died, it died, and there was no turning back. But it made another part of her – the romantic, idealistic piece of her heart that he refused to let die, and that had probably saved her life – want to do the same. So she did - but never in their presence: Simmons put enough pressure on herself to fix this without anybody else butting in, let alone The Cavalry. She was a hero to the girl, if nothing else, and she had to tread lightly.

Unlike Skye, Simmons appeared to have taken it all quite well. Rather than shrinking as Skye had, Jemma seemed to be pushing herself outwards. She seemed bigger, her shoulders broader, her legs stronger. Over the last few months, she had come to look like more of a fighter than ever.

But as Melinda May stood by her friend’s fresh grave, still and serene, with barely a sparkle in her stony eyes, she proved that appearances could be deceiving. 

– 

Simmons stepped away – further away – from Fitz, and took a deep breath. With hands she couldn’t quite feel, she picked up the shovel, and dropped the first dirt onto the pristine, shining black coffin. When it had drummed off the surface, the shovel suddenly became twice as heavy, and it was all she could do not to drop it on its way back to solid ground. Then, abandoning it to fall at her feet, she stared into the pit until her eyes filled with sorrow, regret, and anger that ebbed at her like waves; gentle, yet hungry, ceaseless and eroding. One day they would knock her down. For now, she stood. She stood until it was no longer emotion, but a single thought that crashed against her walls.

_It could have been him._

_It could have been him._

_It could have been him._

She was furious with herself for a moment, before the waves swept it away. It was oddly self-preserving, this lack of emotion. But it would kill her just as well. She dug her nails into the heels of her hand and got nothing for her trouble except physical-reaction tears compounding upon the emotion-based ones already threatening to rain down. God, how did they do it? How did May? How did Peggy? They must have hurt some time. They must have hurt like this. How had they kept standing?

Yet, she noticed with a scientist’s detachment, her knees were not even shaking.

Her mouth fell open and her breath rasped, and a great cry of _WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME_ got caught and drowned and she swallowed it down.

Then, she felt gentle fingers on her arm, and a gentle voice in her ear.

“Jemma…”

His chest was only a few inches away. She remembered for a flash, being in that cave, how impulse had made them grab each other and for a long and glorious moment, she’d felt his heartbeat against her ear. She’d pressed herself against him so many times that she knew, even without quite remembering exactly, how it would feel to do it again. She was a weary traveller, and he was a freshly made bed. Her bones ached at the very thought, but when she turned to face him, it was with eyes made of glass.

She blinked away her tears, only to feel them slipping down her face.

His brow creased. His own eyes, still a little red, searched her face. His lips dropped, mouthing silent syllables as he tried to think of something that would pull her back from the knife’s edge. His arm wavered, fingers nearly brushing her skin, but she knew he would not touch her again without some sort of signal. Maybe not even without verbal consent, given all that had happened between them. He’d always been so thoughtlessly gentle. 

_It could have been him._

Relief. She’d even call it gratitude.

Her saliva turned sour and her eyes dropped from his.

He touched her, dammit, he touched her – just the slightest brush of a finger - and she felt bile rise in the back of her throat. She shoved forward, knocking him out of the way so that he had to make a concerted effort not to fall over. She heard him stumble and cry out, but she didn’t look back. Hiding her face, swallowing hard, she walked across the moist grass as fast as her legs would carry her in these forsaken heels, until she’d gone far enough that she couldn’t feel his confusion and concern prickling at her like static. 

Then she hid.

–

The bark snared and snapped and she cursed what she was doing to this dress as she slid down to the damp earth. Her knees ached as if she’d been carrying a heavy weight all day, and was glad to set it down, but her shoulders felt no lighter for the release. With a sigh, Simmons pressed her head back against the tree. It was unmoving, and it had no heartbeat, and no arms to hold her. But nor could it hear her crying as she fumbled with her jacket pocket and pulled out the knife.

_If you try to kill me with it, I’ll know I can’t trust you._

She thought of him with a rueful smile. His confidence, his easy-going nature, his trust in her, his sensitivity to her even when the others couldn’t see it. Even when Fitz hadn’t been able to see it. She thought of how May had come in from an op or training or up from the rec room with Trip sometimes, very nearly smiling. How Skye had found an ear for her vents about Ward who wouldn’t allow the conversation to end in blood and hellfire and sworn revenge. How when everybody had been determined to mourn the latest bitter twist to their lives, Trip had cajoled them into connecting so that at least they could survive.

Simmons turned the knife over in her hand, and plunged it almost hilt-deep into the dirt in front of her. She drew her knees up and hugged them so that she could stare at it. She got everything from staring at this knife that she should have felt sweeping up his ashes, or walking down here beside an empty coffin. She should have told the story of how he’d saved her life. People deserved to know. He deserved to have people know.

He didn’t deserve somebody grieving for a living person before his headstone.

 _“What’s wrong with me?”_ she whimpered. Sobs caught the end of the question and drew it out, and those waves that had been ebbing at her finally crashed through. She could almost feel the bricks that she had fought to built wash away.

When suddenly, the ocean froze. There was somebody else with her.

Simmons looked up.

“Can I sit?”

Simmons edged aside, and May settled into the space without a word.

“That’s Trip’s knife,” she remarked, examining the hilt.

“Yeah.” 

She’d have told the story, except that it finally felt like she could breathe. She let her head fall back against the bark of the tree, closed her eyes, and inhaled. 

May smiled, and did the same.


End file.
